Most recent stories

Hope Is Not a Political Solution

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Hanging out at the Imaginary Friends Café with all my imaginary friends, poets, itinerant musicians, etc. Writing close to nothing. Can’t finish a thought, so I’m composing a book called “Not Quite Haiku,” which is unfini

Roses, They Can Hurt You

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Sally Sally Sally, don't you go round those roses,those roses, they can hurt you. Now that someonehas written a poem about youit is maybe not the poem you would want written about you.In another universe you may have been a revenge haikuprinted on a greeting card on…

whoosh

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i learned all

Warts

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Marie and Mary lay side by side, partitioned by flimsy blue vinyl on cheap plastic rollers.

Shark

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Violet goes with her mother to the home, delivering cookies to old folks. She's getting to hate how she goes along with everything her mother asks. Some of her friends are rebelling already, and Violet feels something under her skin. It's still just a dark shape, lurking…

Returning

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YOU cross the park as the evening gathers, the playground is deserted, streetlights spark up orange beyond the trees that veil the main road. You feel your journey pushing at your back, the last scraps of the energy of a train hammering north. At the far edge of…

Corkscrewing.

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[SOME PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.]

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 26

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Friday afternoon. Angelique Brody knocked Francesco’s studio door.

All I Know About Grandfather

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There were days in my youth when, through no fault of their own, my parents could not drive me the seven mile trip to my elementary school. When I got older they bought me a bike and that proved duly adequate as conveyance. But when I was six years in age

Pictures of False Hope

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We were busy painting pictures of False Hope on the face of Reality. Tattoos really. But they faded with time. And I now know this: Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. I saw an older writer in a slouched-down Fedora, gray beard and long sc

You Might Be Miss Piggy

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You might be Miss Piggy. But I'm not Kermit the frog.I miscalculate the sums of our predicamenttrying to catch the dragonflies, rolling aroundthe dampness of our resenting this old modern world.You might be Missy Piggy. But I'm not Kermit the frog.I'm just here…

Sneaker Waves

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On the way inside, Peter stopped a moment on the deck and scanned the trees for the raven he and Lottie had seen at lunch. It wasn't there. Of course it wasn't there. He scanned the beach, the rocks and broken shells, the damp stinking rafts of seaweed with their rubbery…

That Was Then, Not Now

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Memory is unreliable, of course-/ re-coloring savored scenes-/ paler here, more saturated there-

Enough, Trump

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Enough, Trump. We've had it my dear, with your pink ties, your hairs, your swagger, your towers, your money, tempers, walls, bombs, smarts, snarls, pouts and doubts, bigotty bile, and once again, style. We just…

Chatter

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The night before his mother's teeth began chattering.

Glory Hobble

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I was to limp with stunned, growing horror, as I navigated through the swirling smoke and maze of human corpses...

Hunger

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It took all four of his kids to convince my father to pull the plug. Mom's car crash had left her a vegetable, but of course he hung on. Once they withdrew life support, she was gone in ten minutes. The first thing our father said was that he was hungry. He felt…

Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem Here?

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I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill, and … Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem here? Thank you. Sheesh! As I was saying, I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill. And I meet someone who names all his fish after people he doesn’t l

Sapphics

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SapphicsSlumber comes too late to scare awakening; I know, before, there was a life to bind me. I cross the streets instead and watch the rainfall Murmur without ears. It can know no sound but seems…

Antiphony of Sighs

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IGlasgow, its swollen bleeding face, its unrepentant eyesProud inside its operas, vain within its shames.Watch these sanctities unsound shrink into their oneness.Set these centuries alight, peer into the flames.Into their time descending the pedestrians now cease,all is…

Airline Passengers! Is There A Right To Recline?

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It's called the Knee Defender. But I prefer to think of it as the Schmuck Identifier.

Kash Mire

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You watch with frigid eyes, as their soggy woolens squelch dark mud, even smiling a little as they make croaking frog-lure noises. You know eventually a toad or two would land in the Frogger. You like the word Frogger.

By Derangement of All Our Senses

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We will collapse in a storm of images

Switchback

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I realize I am standing with my hands on my naked hips, my panties and shorts are clumped around my left ankle.

consolations

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we swim in failure

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 25

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It was 6 a.m. when the phone next to the bed awakened Francesco.

Strange Sign At the Outskirts to Paradise

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In an area of high winds and strong convictions, I have lived among the ever-changing crowd that is always the same. I must have died overnight, and now my wings are flapping in my own face. I used to be an owl, a night owl, to be sure

Three-toed Sloth Love

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Couldn’t we just do a quick ie

For You

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Why should you go through that for me?

Jimmy and the Ark

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Yes, he'll be quiet. Very quiet. He rocks himself, the ark, suddenly imagining water underneath him, over head, all around. Water, water, water—